Whaling Museum’s Skeletons, Scrimshaw Boost New Bedford

Visitors gathering at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. The museum is at 18 Johnny Cake Hill, New Bedford, Massachusetts. Source: New Bedford Whaling Museum via Bloomberg

June 24 (Bloomberg) -- There was a dusty little museum we
kids got carted off to in the town where I grew up.

When it rained five days in a row in the summer, when your
mother couldn’t think of one more thing to do with you, it was
off to the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

It was smallish, but had cool stuff: model ships,
incredible paintings of man versus whale (with both sides always
seeming to get the raw end of the deal), a little room designed
to mimic a home back in Pilgrim times.

And there was the Lagoda, touted as the largest ship model
in the world, a half-size replica of a real whaling ship that
you could board and explore. The Lagoda seemed to be every kid’s
favorite part.

For me, though, it’s always been the museum’s scrimshaw
collection.

Scrimshaw is a folk art, perhaps not originally American,
but primarily so. It is the carving of and engraving on bone and
ivory, mostly practiced by whalers on the teeth and bones of
their catches. Back in the 1950s, I was entranced by the array
on display at the Whaling Museum.

Sailor Series

Fifty years later, I am in heaven, as my hometown’s former
rainy-day kid catcher has blossomed into a world-class museum
with the largest and finest scrimshaw collection on earth.

In the 1990s, things started changing for the Whaling
Museum when Executive Director Ann Brengle came on board. She
had a vision and a real sense of the importance of New Bedford’s
deep and proud whaling history. Improvements included a lecture
theater (used for its annual Sailor Series), new spaces for
gatherings and exhibits, and a grand hall that boasts several
enormous hanging whale skeletons.

Some years later, when the nearby Kendall Whaling Museum
closed, its stellar scrimshaw collection was moved to New
Bedford’s museum.

What struck me, and moved me -- even as a child -- is that
this is an art born of longing. The town was full of houses with
widow’s walks -- the small aerie above the roof line where
whaling wives held vigil for their husbands’ returning ships.

For their part, the sailors faced stultifying boredom on
trips that could last years, and used the bones and teeth of
whales to tell their tales of the sea, or often craft something
for loved ones.

Ivory Image

Whale teeth were cut into with a knife, the etching filled
in with India ink and wiped off; scenes often depict the
whaler’s ship, a sailor’s struggle to harpoon a leviathan, or a
portrait of the girl left behind.

Much of the scrimshaw artistry in the Whaling Museum tugs
at the heart, a treasure trove of artifacts filled with longing
and love.

Even now, half a century after I first saw it, my favorite
piece remains a young woman sitting demurely in a chair, her
suitor, surely just home from a long voyage, on bended knee,
proposing -- all intricately carved in whalebone.

The whalers carved for themselves as well, of course:
elaborate toothpicks, watch hutches, and a breathtaking array of
canes are on display. Every piece has someone’s life and story
behind it. The Whaling Museum’s new permanent and beautifully
curated scrimshaw collection does what all great art does --
lures you in, raises questions, tells a tale.

Skeleton Quartet

Though the scrimshaw is my particular obsession, the museum
is full of the fantastic oddities that make it unique. The
quartet of enormous whale skeletons -- one paired with her
unborn calf -- are like a gigantic, complex anatomical puzzle.

The museum’s maritime paintings, prints, logbooks --and of
course, scrimshaw -- make up the world’s foremost collection of
whaling history.

Every January, I drive from New York to New Bedford, more
than 400 miles round trip, to the Whaling Museum’s annual
“Moby-Dick” Marathon, a 25-hour continuous reading of
America’s greatest novel, whose opening chapters are set in New
Bedford. For any Herman Melville aficionado this is a must,
whether you come in person (highly recommended) or watch the
live stream at www.whalingmuseum.org.

Seafaring Yarn

Read aloud, “Moby-Dick” is a brand-new experience no
matter how many times you’ve read it, a seafaring yarn like no
other, and the dedicated staff makes it come alive. Fans gather
from all points of the compass to hear the famous opening words,
“Call me Ishmael,” or take their turn to read for 10 minutes
(that’s what I come for).

Local actors recreate scenes, the Lagoda plays its part,
and the audience moves en masse across the street to hear Father
Marple’s famed fire-and-brimstone speech in the original
Seamen’s Bethel mentioned in the book. It’s an experience like
no other.

“Lucem Diffundo” (We Light the World) was New Bedford’s
motto back at the height of its whaling days when it was
America’s wealthiest city. And though the need for whale oil to
light our lamps has long since disappeared, the New Bedford
Whaling Museum keeps an integral part of America’s history very
much alive.